After Sarkhan's timey-wimey shenanigans in Fate Reforged, what happened to the original timeline of Tarkir?

It doesn’t exist anymore. It got rewritten with the new timeline.

Any concern that Isocron Scepter and similar cards will make some of the Spree cards too repeatable, while the additional cost still have to be paid the cheap mv can allow for some serious shenanigans.

If older mechanics break in larger formats, we’ll fix it with banning. The present can’t be held hostage of the past.

UN-RULES QUESTION!!! I cast enter the dungeon. During the subgame, I play R&D’s secret lair, and also play revelation. Am I allowed to look at/play cards from my subgame hand?

The hand that gets revealed by the Revelation is your subgame hand. And yes, you are allowed to play cards from it. I’m not getting what shenanigans you’re up to.

What is it that makes Cascade easier to manipulate through deckbuilding than Discover? It seems like they use the same wording- I would say the advantage to Cascade is it's a cast trigger

Cascade is linked to the mana cost whereas discover can be any number. This makes it easier to balance and prevent deck building shenanigans.

If you somehow played a card that allows you to play an additional land each turn (IE Enter the Unknown) on an opponent's speed (such as via Teferi shenanigans), could you play Dryad Arbor on your opponent's turn?

Lands, by the current rules definition, I believe can only be played on your turn.

"Printing process shenanigans"I know anything extra you ask a printer to do costs more money to design/contract/test -- and efforts to optimize printer technology aren't always worth it.The discussion on mixing black/silver border cards has my mind down a rabbit hole. If you were able to include a row of cards rotated 180 degrees, you would have cards with silver 'bottoms' and black 'tops.' Theoretically, this could allow different 'splits'. Which obstacle would be more challenging to overcome:

• Printing blanks with rows rows of 'upside down' card backs. (And then ensuring those were kept separate from regular blanks.)
• Righting any inverted rows prior to placement in boosters.
• Something else entirely.

Unless we were okay with cards being upside down in booster packs, we couldn’t do this. There’s no way to rotate cards from the printing sheet (that I’m aware of).

Howdy Mark, i know its early but can i get a maybe on a card giving other creatures Backup? :)

The reason back-up only grants the word printed on the card was to prevent some shenanigans that were causing problems. That type of card would undo all that work.

One thought I as had on tap vs once-per-turn, that I haven’t seen on your blog (though I may have just missed it) is the templating. Tap comes upfront; whereas once-per-turn comes at the end.The order “{2}: do a long winded and complicated thing. Only activate once per turn.” feels like you get to the end and have something taken away in a way that “once per turn, {2}: do a long-winded and complicated thing” wouldn’t. (Though doing it *exactly* that way, you run into other templating issues.)But I do also think a lot of it is that no matter where you put it, “tap” reads as an invitation to shenanigans, whereas “once per turn” reads as a No Jank Allowed sign. (Which is, alas, kind of the point of the more stringent restriction, in terms of game balance.)

I do understand psychologically why it upsets some players, and if we can find a better template that hits the other needs of the card (things like making it as easy to use as possible), we’ll seriously consider it. The larger message here is some player’s not likely something isn’t always enough of an impetus to change something. There are a lot of requirements that a game component like templating has that have to be addressed. Yes, we keep notes like this in mind, because we’ll fix it if we find a good solution, but oftentimes there isn’t a better option (again that meets all the required needs).

If/When: another premier set set in the past? (preferably without the need for time travel shenanigans)

When. The Brothers’ War used time travel pretty minimally. Teferi merely witnessed the past. He didn’t interfere with it in any way.

If players are Planeswalkers by lore, and Form of the Approach of the Second Sun makes someone into a card, can we be interacted with by cards like Garth or Call the Gatewatch? Or if it's just flavor, then what do we taste like once we're a card?

The players are planeswalkers, so if you get made into a card by Form of the Approach of the Second Sun, you are a planeswalker card and can be interacted with as such. Note that if you leave the library or the library get shuffled, you stop being a card.Yes, many shenanigans can happen with Yet Another Aether Vortex (provided you find a way to not die to 0 loyalty).